While I agree that it would be nice for e-books to be cheaper why do individuals insist on comparing the price of a newly released e-book to a paperback when most books are released first as hard covers which typically run from 20-30 dollars. Following the same model newly released ebooks at the price of 10 dollars are half the price of the competition.
I don't. I compare to hardbacks. Amazon had Patrick Rothfuss' newest book for about $15 in hardback, or the e-book for $12. So, save $3 dollars to get a digital copy, which I can't lend, can't give to someone else when I'm done, can't sell to a used bookstore, etc.
So yes, I think that e-book prices need to see a major reduction. They are very limited, are significantly cheaper to produce and distribute (approximately 0 marginal cost), and yet cost more than a paperback and nearly as much as a high-volume hardback (you're right, though, regarding those few hardbacks that come out that they actually try to charge full MSRP for - compared to those, the digital price might be approximately appropriate).
I did say Fantasy, not Sci-Fi, but I know what you mean. So, I suppose I can expand the question. Anything at all worth reading on there?
Of the names they have listed, give Bujold a try. I've enjoyed almost all of her books; fun story, great characters, generally very well written. It looks like they only have one book and a short story available for free. The Warrior's Apprentice is quite good, and was actually my introduction to her work - it is the first book featuring Miles Vorkosigan, her major central character (earlier books, now together in the volume Cordelia's Honor, cover his parents - and I think they actually were written first - but Warrior's Apprentice is a good place to start). Mountains of Mourning is also very good, but very different from most of her work (although it does feature Miles).
If you prefer fantasy she has a good series in that genre as well, I think the first book was Curse of Chalion. She has a more recent fantasy series, The Sharing Knife, but I didn't like it nearly as much as her earlier fantasy and science fiction. And probably a different publisher, so no free e-books of any of them as far as I know.
Sure, it may be cooler to watch videos by waving your arms, but still... buttons are more accurate and faster to use. What's wrong with using the controller for controls?
Nothing. Sort of like eating sushi with a fork...may be more practical, but you will not rack up any style points in doing so.
Huh? Obviously you don't know how to use chopsticks... just as easy as using a fork.
This is more like using a trained chimpanzee to eat your sushi. Pointless, slow, unreliable, and the only possible reason anyone would ever do it is to show off to their buddies. Once.
Heck, there are LEGITIMATE no-cd patches for some older games, like the v1.12 patch for Diablo 2.
Even EA has been known to do this... the last update for Battlefield 2 added all the content of the expansion pack(s), and I believe also removes the CD check.
I live in Sacramento, CA and it is officially faster for me to drive to LA (buena park, Disneyland) than to fly.
BS. I spent a couple of months commuting weekly from Sacramento to Ontario by plane. 4 hours door to door, including picking up my rental at the airport and driving up to the work site in the San Bernardino Mountains (Running Springs/Lake Arrowhead area). Much quicker than driving (would be approx. 4 hours longer from my house).
Of course, that only works because both those airports are really easy to get in/out of most of the time, and Southwest has basically hourly flights between them (so coming back on Friday afternoons I could usually hop on a plane pretty quick no matter what time I actually arrived at the airport). I started showing up at the airport 20-30 minutes before my flight knowing I could breeze through security.
Disneyland is NOT LA. Just because OC doesnt have a central 'city' doesnt mean LA has swallowed us up.
Everyone else in California (and the rest of the world) disagrees. Everything between Santa Barbara and San Diego is LA.
Yes, grossly inaccurate. Too bad. People might listen if, looking at a satellite photo of Southern California, there was any way to distinguish between the suburban sea that is LA and the suburban sea that is Orange County.
Besides, you are in the geologic and geographic structure known as the LA Basin.
Right now the U.S. can barely afford to maintain the infrastructure it already has, much less add the kind of construction and maintenance you would need to add high speed rail across long distances. I hate to say it, but we're kind of stuck with what we've got.
That's probably true. At the moment. Largely due to our ridiculous land use planning, which in most of the country amounts to, "let's build the least-dense, most infrastructure-intensive cities we possibly can." We then complain about the crippling costs of infrastructure upkeep and replacement.
The only way we can break the cycle is basically to admit that no, every person can't have a single family home on an acre of land.
Unfortunately the only way to avoid this is increased government. Economically there is just too much incentive gobble up millions of acres of relatively cheap farm/scrub land and turn it into relatively expensive subdivision. Until we find the will to put actual limits on urban/suburban sprawl, and actually mandate higher-density land use, there is no way we will be able to build better, more efficient infrastructure like high-speed rail.
I support the effort to build high speed rail in California, but I realize that unless a major shift in land use planning occurs it is probably going to be an expensive failure. The cities it is meant to connect, while having sufficiently high populations to support it, are simply too spread out to make it work - if you need a car at either end of your journey anyway, that pretty much eliminates the reason to go by train in the first place.
It is our devotion to an outdated concept of the "American Dream" that is killing us - the idea that each of us can live in our own little fiefdom. We can either change the dream, or accept the fact that in exchange we will have to pay the much higher costs of the required infrastructure.
I thought we were going to Web 5.0, because it was so awesome it skipped 3 and 4.
In Web 3.0 news, the blowhard founder of a company I worked for has been bandying about with that term for the past 3 years. He never really had a good explanation of it, but I think it made him feel smart. So smart that the company is barely hanging on with about 25% of its one time staff and customers.
Get with the times! 5.0 just sounds way too old. We're switching to a new numbering system where every minor update gets an entirely new version number. I expect to be up to 11 by lunch.
People who don't have a Facebook account should get one or risk having a financial profile created for them says founder and president of Metal International, Ken Rutkowski.
If that's true its a crap bank. Can you imagine Bank of America, Barclays, or BNP Paribas saying "if you don't have an account already you better open one or someone else might do it in your name and build up a financial profile in your name"? If they are going to be a bank they should do some level of customer checking.
Not banks, but I'm pretty sure Trans Union, Equifax, and Experian have already created financial profiles of you (assuming you're an American). And based on the experiences of several people I know, they often make very little effort to actually ensure the information they are collecting and putting in your profile actually belongs to you.
But I don't think there's any reason to treat internet sales any differently than in-store.
There is a reason, in that applying sales tax rules is very hard. Sales taxes vary from place to place even within a state. A brick-and-mortar store has an advantage in figuring it out.
That still doesn't seem sufficient reason to put those brick-and-mortar stores at a disadvantage to internet retailers, and there are many potential ways to deal with it.
And yet somehow, even in large, populous states like California with myriad different sales tax rates depending on county and city, any time I buy something from a store with a California presence they manage to charge me the correct tax rate. I'm sure it is the same for every other state. The technical problems have been solved; the only reason internet retailers are fighting this is that it would take away the 5-10% automatic price advantage they currently enjoy over brick-and-mortar competitors. Some states fight it (Nevada) because they would likely lose jobs as companies would lose one major reason for locating in their state, and might actually move their distribution facilities closer to where their customers are located. The only reason slashdotters don't like it is the normal aversion to paying taxes coupled with the high proclivity to purchase things online.
The Smithsonian center in DC is free. I just saw Enterprise earlier this year.
I would say when you pay for parking however, that the museum is not free.
Parking is expensive, but then it's an airport - if they didn't charge a lot you would probably have people parking at the museum to catch their flights. Still a lot cheaper than the daily garage at the airport (I'm guessing here - $15 is cheaper than the daily rate at nearby airports here, anyway), and only a short shuttle ride to the terminals...
Also, you can take mass transit to get there. I was there three or four years ago, as I recall it was a short bus ride to the nearest metro station, and I think they were planning a dedicated (free?) shuttle to the museum on the mall.
They also have the Enola Gay and an SR-71. Very cool museum - well worth the trip out there if you are in the DC area.
Second that. It is an incredible museum. I remember being wowed by the Air and Space museum on the mall as a kid, then being a little disappointed when I went back as an adult. The Udvar-Hazy is the grown-up version of the Air and Space museum. Really an amazing, cavernous space filled with cool and interesting aircraft.
Only if we can get a UN resolution saying it's okay.
The Chinese and Russians would veto any resolution authorizing force, so the US would have to take unilateral action against the US for bombing the UN in the US.
I think it would more beneficial to ramp up GHz first rather than having more cores. Which would you rather have? A 4GHz mobile CPU or 4 1GHz CPUs? The answer is easily 4GHz since every single interaction, graphics update, processing of user input is going to be 4X more responsive, and you will easily notice the difference, with multiple cores you also have the overhead and hassle of synchronizing threads and the mind numbing task of updating mobile apps to take advantage of them. The ONLY reason we have more cores on the desktop is because we reached a ceiling for clock rate and heat dissipation, until that happens on the mobile CPU there is absolutely no reason to favor cores over clock rate, in fact even less so than the desktop since responsiveness is even more important.
How about a 4-core processor that can run one core at 4 GHz or all 4 cores at 1 GHz depending on what is needed at the time (or one core at 1 GHz, etc.)? You know, like Intel has been offering since at least Lynnfield?
One core running governmnent spyware. One core running phone maker's bloatware One core running MAFIAA trusted computing DRM/spyware One core running the user's apps.
You forgot "One core running distributed Zombie client". I guess we'll have to ditch the "User Apps", its not like they'll be missed.
Also forgot the "Extended Life Battery" kit it will need (100" extension cord in an easy to manage case).... do not use in inclement weather.
Unless you are a pre-paid customer, then go ahead.
They may go into a "shut down" state, but that doesn't mean they won't be drawing power. In reality a lot of the time all they are is clocked down.
Actually, the newer processors can shut down unused cores. There is a very small amount of leakage, but nearly insignificant. This article provides some information from the Lynnfield release. Obviously in the desktop environment the bonus from shutting down cores is clocking the one that is in use higher; but you can turn it around and just greatly reduce power consumption if you only need one core running. This should work fine with mobile processors, though I confess I don't know if the current dual core designs do so.
They've already sold an estimated $33 million worth of Minecraft with very little costs. Furthermore, nothing will actually change on release date; the game will be sold for the same price before and after that date. It's just a development milestone target. I don't think "suicidal" applies here.
What!? They promised me when I bought the beta that it was going to cost more when officially released! Those lying nordic scumbags!
I had fun with Minecraft for a month or so, then just stopped playing it. Don't know why. Maybe I'll check back on the official release date to see if they've made any interesting changes.
Off-topic, but what's up with Slashdot links and FF4? Tried to go look at the images and the link didn't work. Had to copy & paste.
I've been having the same problem. Found it works to double-right-click (to open the context menu; single right click doesn't seem to work) and select "open in new tab", but pretty ridiculous. Even worse than before, when control-clicking to open a link in a new window just expand parent threads, often causing you to have to hunt all over the place to find the comment you were reading.
Slashdot Mirror
While I agree that it would be nice for e-books to be cheaper why do individuals insist on comparing the price of a newly released e-book to a paperback when most books are released first as hard covers which typically run from 20-30 dollars. Following the same model newly released ebooks at the price of 10 dollars are half the price of the competition.
I don't. I compare to hardbacks. Amazon had Patrick Rothfuss' newest book for about $15 in hardback, or the e-book for $12. So, save $3 dollars to get a digital copy, which I can't lend, can't give to someone else when I'm done, can't sell to a used bookstore, etc.
So yes, I think that e-book prices need to see a major reduction. They are very limited, are significantly cheaper to produce and distribute (approximately 0 marginal cost), and yet cost more than a paperback and nearly as much as a high-volume hardback (you're right, though, regarding those few hardbacks that come out that they actually try to charge full MSRP for - compared to those, the digital price might be approximately appropriate).
I did say Fantasy, not Sci-Fi, but I know what you mean. So, I suppose I can expand the question. Anything at all worth reading on there?
Of the names they have listed, give Bujold a try. I've enjoyed almost all of her books; fun story, great characters, generally very well written. It looks like they only have one book and a short story available for free. The Warrior's Apprentice is quite good, and was actually my introduction to her work - it is the first book featuring Miles Vorkosigan, her major central character (earlier books, now together in the volume Cordelia's Honor, cover his parents - and I think they actually were written first - but Warrior's Apprentice is a good place to start). Mountains of Mourning is also very good, but very different from most of her work (although it does feature Miles).
If you prefer fantasy she has a good series in that genre as well, I think the first book was Curse of Chalion. She has a more recent fantasy series, The Sharing Knife, but I didn't like it nearly as much as her earlier fantasy and science fiction. And probably a different publisher, so no free e-books of any of them as far as I know.
Considering that the moon landing was STAGED in a desert it just might!
I suppose the moon would be considered a desert, so... I agree??
Sure, it may be cooler to watch videos by waving your arms, but still... buttons are more accurate and faster to use. What's wrong with using the controller for controls?
Nothing. Sort of like eating sushi with a fork...may be more practical, but you will not rack up any style points in doing so.
Huh? Obviously you don't know how to use chopsticks... just as easy as using a fork.
This is more like using a trained chimpanzee to eat your sushi. Pointless, slow, unreliable, and the only possible reason anyone would ever do it is to show off to their buddies. Once.
Heck, there are LEGITIMATE no-cd patches for some older games, like the v1.12 patch for Diablo 2.
Even EA has been known to do this... the last update for Battlefield 2 added all the content of the expansion pack(s), and I believe also removes the CD check.
I live in Sacramento, CA and it is officially faster for me to drive to LA (buena park, Disneyland) than to fly.
BS. I spent a couple of months commuting weekly from Sacramento to Ontario by plane. 4 hours door to door, including picking up my rental at the airport and driving up to the work site in the San Bernardino Mountains (Running Springs/Lake Arrowhead area). Much quicker than driving (would be approx. 4 hours longer from my house).
Of course, that only works because both those airports are really easy to get in/out of most of the time, and Southwest has basically hourly flights between them (so coming back on Friday afternoons I could usually hop on a plane pretty quick no matter what time I actually arrived at the airport). I started showing up at the airport 20-30 minutes before my flight knowing I could breeze through security.
Disneyland is NOT LA. Just because OC doesnt have a central 'city' doesnt mean LA has swallowed us up.
Everyone else in California (and the rest of the world) disagrees. Everything between Santa Barbara and San Diego is LA.
Yes, grossly inaccurate. Too bad. People might listen if, looking at a satellite photo of Southern California, there was any way to distinguish between the suburban sea that is LA and the suburban sea that is Orange County.
Besides, you are in the geologic and geographic structure known as the LA Basin.
Right now the U.S. can barely afford to maintain the infrastructure it already has, much less add the kind of construction and maintenance you would need to add high speed rail across long distances. I hate to say it, but we're kind of stuck with what we've got.
That's probably true. At the moment. Largely due to our ridiculous land use planning, which in most of the country amounts to, "let's build the least-dense, most infrastructure-intensive cities we possibly can." We then complain about the crippling costs of infrastructure upkeep and replacement.
The only way we can break the cycle is basically to admit that no, every person can't have a single family home on an acre of land.
Unfortunately the only way to avoid this is increased government. Economically there is just too much incentive gobble up millions of acres of relatively cheap farm/scrub land and turn it into relatively expensive subdivision. Until we find the will to put actual limits on urban/suburban sprawl, and actually mandate higher-density land use, there is no way we will be able to build better, more efficient infrastructure like high-speed rail.
I support the effort to build high speed rail in California, but I realize that unless a major shift in land use planning occurs it is probably going to be an expensive failure. The cities it is meant to connect, while having sufficiently high populations to support it, are simply too spread out to make it work - if you need a car at either end of your journey anyway, that pretty much eliminates the reason to go by train in the first place.
It is our devotion to an outdated concept of the "American Dream" that is killing us - the idea that each of us can live in our own little fiefdom. We can either change the dream, or accept the fact that in exchange we will have to pay the much higher costs of the required infrastructure.
I thought we were going to Web 5.0, because it was so awesome it skipped 3 and 4.
In Web 3.0 news, the blowhard founder of a company I worked for has been bandying about with that term for the past 3 years. He never really had a good explanation of it, but I think it made him feel smart. So smart that the company is barely hanging on with about 25% of its one time staff and customers.
Get with the times! 5.0 just sounds way too old. We're switching to a new numbering system where every minor update gets an entirely new version number. I expect to be up to 11 by lunch.
People who don't have a Facebook account should get one or risk having a financial profile created for them says founder and president of Metal International, Ken Rutkowski.
If that's true its a crap bank. Can you imagine Bank of America, Barclays, or BNP Paribas saying "if you don't have an account already you better open one or someone else might do it in your name and build up a financial profile in your name"? If they are going to be a bank they should do some level of customer checking.
Not banks, but I'm pretty sure Trans Union, Equifax, and Experian have already created financial profiles of you (assuming you're an American). And based on the experiences of several people I know, they often make very little effort to actually ensure the information they are collecting and putting in your profile actually belongs to you.
But I don't think there's any reason to treat internet sales any differently than in-store.
There is a reason, in that applying sales tax rules is very hard. Sales taxes vary from place to place even within a state. A brick-and-mortar store has an advantage in figuring it out.
That still doesn't seem sufficient reason to put those brick-and-mortar stores at a disadvantage to internet retailers, and there are many potential ways to deal with it.
And yet somehow, even in large, populous states like California with myriad different sales tax rates depending on county and city, any time I buy something from a store with a California presence they manage to charge me the correct tax rate. I'm sure it is the same for every other state. The technical problems have been solved; the only reason internet retailers are fighting this is that it would take away the 5-10% automatic price advantage they currently enjoy over brick-and-mortar competitors. Some states fight it (Nevada) because they would likely lose jobs as companies would lose one major reason for locating in their state, and might actually move their distribution facilities closer to where their customers are located. The only reason slashdotters don't like it is the normal aversion to paying taxes coupled with the high proclivity to purchase things online.
The Smithsonian center in DC is free. I just saw Enterprise earlier this year.
I would say when you pay for parking however, that the museum is not free.
Parking is expensive, but then it's an airport - if they didn't charge a lot you would probably have people parking at the museum to catch their flights. Still a lot cheaper than the daily garage at the airport (I'm guessing here - $15 is cheaper than the daily rate at nearby airports here, anyway), and only a short shuttle ride to the terminals...
Also, you can take mass transit to get there. I was there three or four years ago, as I recall it was a short bus ride to the nearest metro station, and I think they were planning a dedicated (free?) shuttle to the museum on the mall.
They also have the Enola Gay and an SR-71. Very cool museum - well worth the trip out there if you are in the DC area.
Second that. It is an incredible museum. I remember being wowed by the Air and Space museum on the mall as a kid, then being a little disappointed when I went back as an adult. The Udvar-Hazy is the grown-up version of the Air and Space museum. Really an amazing, cavernous space filled with cool and interesting aircraft.
Only if we can get a UN resolution saying it's okay.
The Chinese and Russians would veto any resolution authorizing force, so the US would have to take unilateral action against the US for bombing the UN in the US.
Meanwhile, Ban-ki Moon would shed many tears.
Now there's an unbiased source of news.
This may be true, Google might have lied (on purpose or by accident), but can't we at least come up with a source that isn't so obviously biased?
I think it would more beneficial to ramp up GHz first rather than having more cores. Which would you rather have? A 4GHz mobile CPU or 4 1GHz CPUs? The answer is easily 4GHz since every single interaction, graphics update, processing of user input is going to be 4X more responsive, and you will easily notice the difference, with multiple cores you also have the overhead and hassle of synchronizing threads and the mind numbing task of updating mobile apps to take advantage of them. The ONLY reason we have more cores on the desktop is because we reached a ceiling for clock rate and heat dissipation, until that happens on the mobile CPU there is absolutely no reason to favor cores over clock rate, in fact even less so than the desktop since responsiveness is even more important.
How about a 4-core processor that can run one core at 4 GHz or all 4 cores at 1 GHz depending on what is needed at the time (or one core at 1 GHz, etc.)? You know, like Intel has been offering since at least Lynnfield?
One core running governmnent spyware. One core running phone maker's bloatware One core running MAFIAA trusted computing DRM/spyware One core running the user's apps.
You forgot "One core running distributed Zombie client". I guess we'll have to ditch the "User Apps", its not like they'll be missed.
Also forgot the "Extended Life Battery" kit it will need (100" extension cord in an easy to manage case). ... do not use in inclement weather.
Unless you are a pre-paid customer, then go ahead.
They may go into a "shut down" state, but that doesn't mean they won't be drawing power. In reality a lot of the time all they are is clocked down.
Actually, the newer processors can shut down unused cores. There is a very small amount of leakage, but nearly insignificant. This article provides some information from the Lynnfield release. Obviously in the desktop environment the bonus from shutting down cores is clocking the one that is in use higher; but you can turn it around and just greatly reduce power consumption if you only need one core running. This should work fine with mobile processors, though I confess I don't know if the current dual core designs do so.
The solution to pollution is dilution.
That's what the miners tell me, anyway.
They've already sold an estimated $33 million worth of Minecraft with very little costs. Furthermore, nothing will actually change on release date; the game will be sold for the same price before and after that date. It's just a development milestone target. I don't think "suicidal" applies here.
What!? They promised me when I bought the beta that it was going to cost more when officially released! Those lying nordic scumbags!
I had fun with Minecraft for a month or so, then just stopped playing it. Don't know why. Maybe I'll check back on the official release date to see if they've made any interesting changes.
Huh? Mario Kart has always been multiplayer.
Double Dash is the best one, but my group of friends has abandoned the series for the very-similar Blur anyway.
Meh, double-dash was okay. Mario Kart 64 is still the best.
Bah. Clearly you never dealt with Baby Bells back in the day. Telco's idea of a "redundant circuit" was two wires in the same conduit.
To be fair, that is pretty redundant. Not engineering redundant, but literally redundant.
Maybe they were just confused?
The "aliens" use a fission-propelled starship; I believe Stephenson got the idea from project Daedalus.
Great read, with the usual Stephenson caveat - you probably won't be happy with the ending.
Off-topic, but what's up with Slashdot links and FF4? Tried to go look at the images and the link didn't work. Had to copy & paste.
I've been having the same problem. Found it works to double-right-click (to open the context menu; single right click doesn't seem to work) and select "open in new tab", but pretty ridiculous. Even worse than before, when control-clicking to open a link in a new window just expand parent threads, often causing you to have to hunt all over the place to find the comment you were reading.
More like cracker collective.
Mmm, crackers. Now I just need a wine collective and a cheese collective.